Mobile communications has changed the way people communicate and mobile phones have been transformed from a luxury item to an essential part of every day life. The use of mobile phones is today dictated by social situations, rather than hampered by location or technology. While voice connections fulfill the basic need to communicate, and mobile voice connections continue to filter even further into the fabric of every day life, the data connections, such as the mobile Internet, for example, is the next step in the mobile communication revolution. The mobile Internet is poised to become a common source of everyday information, and easy, versatile mobile access to this data will be taken for granted.
Third generation (3G) cellular networks have been specifically designed to fulfill these future demands of the mobile Internet. As these services grow in popularity and usage, factors such as cost efficient optimization of network capacity and quality of service (QoS) will become even more essential to cellular operators than it is today. These factors may be achieved with careful network planning and operation, improvements in transmission methods, and advances in receiver techniques. To this end, carriers need technologies that will allow them to increase downlink throughput and, in turn, offer advanced QoS capabilities and speeds that rival those delivered by cable modem and/or DSL service providers. In this regard, networks based on wideband CDMA (WCDMA) technology may make the delivery of data to end users a more feasible option for today's wireless carriers.
The evolution of WCDMA technology has resulted in the development of various wireless communication technologies, including General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Enhanced Data rates for GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) Evolution (EDGE), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), and High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), for example. In this regard, the GPRS and EDGE technologies may be utilized for enhancing the data throughput of present second generation (2G) systems such as GSM. The UMTS wireless communication technology is an adaptation of the WCDMA 3G system by GSM. The HSDPA wireless communication technology is an Internet protocol (IP) based service, oriented for data communications, which adapts WCDMA to support data transfer rates on the order of 10 megabits per second (Mbits/s).
Battery life in mobile devices, such as cellular telephones, has always been an important consideration for consumers. For some consumers, battery life issues may be mitigated by using higher capacity batteries. But with higher capacity usually comes increased weight and size, which are important consideration for other consumers. One way in which designers have tackled this dilemma has been to optimize battery usage. For example, many cellular protocols facilitate a discontinuous RX and TX so that the receiver and transmitter portions of the cellular telephone are disabled when not in use. In addition, the processors in such devices may shut down other modules and may even disable various system clocks when they are not needed. For instance, USB controllers, SIM controllers and the like may be disabled when they are not needed and the CPU clock may be shutdown as well.
Although these techniques have increased battery life, the need for smaller and smaller mobile devices and therefore smaller and smaller batteries has persisted. Therefore, additional techniques are required to extend battery life even further.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.